Making events special

SACRAMENTO -- Rodolfo Vázquez is convinced that creativity is the strongest weapon against hard times, enabling one to imagine new possibilities and reinvent oneself professionally.

Vázquez arrived in the Woodland, California area 20 years ago from his hometown of Ameca, Jalisco, México, seeking a more favorable economic situation than he faced at home.

Although he was a civil engineer in his native country, Vázquez had no luck finding a job in that career in California, and found himself forced to take up work in construction.

"Those days I did everything from working in fast food restaurants to finally ending up in construction. However, I felt that I could do more and give more to the community, so one day I decided to venture out into a completely new field: photography and video," said Vázquez, father of 3.

With this in mind, in 1995, the entrepreneur launched Vázquez Fotovideo, a family business that offered still photography and video service for weddings and quinceañeras (15th birthday or coming of age parties).

Vázquez Fotovideo succeeded and expanded, and in 2005 the business grew into Vázquez Events, offering new services like event planning, giant screen rentals and music.

"In the Latino community, events like quinceañeras and weddings are very big traditions, and such events require a lot of organization and coordination. We saw the great potential in that, and put our creativity to play and made it work.

"That's how we've made a good name for ourselves within Sacramento's Latino community," Vázquez commented.

Vázquez Events refers clients to other service providers for those parts of events that the company itself does not manage, which might include decoration, cake-making, limousine rental or clothing rental.

"What we do is facilitate the organization of the event for our clients, taking into account all the work that's required to achieve it," Vázquez explained.

Almost 100 percent of Vázquez's clientele is Latino.

Although it's a family business, managed primarily by Vázquez and his eldest son, additional personnel must often be hired; usually five to 10 people for each event.

For now, Vázquez's plan is to keep expanding the business.

"We've been doing this for years and so far we've succeeded in every challenge. We're very confident that over the next year we'll achieve our new objectives," Vázquez said.